Wolpe on Brandon’s Holocaust analogy: ‘It is stupidity on stilts’

Every now and then we forbid certain things to certain select individuals: Boxers may not use their fists in casual … Continued

by David Wolpe

Every now and then we forbid certain things to certain select individuals: Boxers may not use their fists in casual fights; CIA agents may not write freely of their personal experiences. I think it is time for a new restriction: any mention of Hitler, the Holocaust or gas chambers should be legally forbidden to manifest idiots.

It is long past time that we stopped belittling the memory of millions who suffered and died at the hands of the Nazis by pressing them into service for every political analogy. We hear this ignorant comparison deployed with reference to abortion, gay marriage, offensive art, budget cuts, with virtually any public issue where the speaker feels that his rhetorical jets need rocket fuel.

Stop it. Just stop. Survivors deserve better than to hear their unspeakable suffering turned into a talking point. And the dead, the millions slaughtered on the altar of hatred and savagery, should not have their memory besmirched by the moronic compulsion to invoke the holocaust at every presumed offense.

The attempted destruction of an entire people should be spoken in hushed tones, with the reverence due the victims and the shocked horror at the evil of the perpetrators. Anything else tells us nothing about the issue and everything about the speaker. I read that Pastor Brandon apologized. That is a good start. The next step, to be wished for and emulated, is to just keep quiet.

But when Terry Jones first threatened to burn a Koran, some writers on this forum likened it Nazi book-burnings, and said it was the first step on the road to annihilation. (The difference being that Terry Jones couldn’t prevent anyone from reading the Koran, the way the Nazis did.) Let’s be consistent in disallowed excessive Nazi analogies.

It wasn’t me

Well said Mr Wolpe

Secular1

Next time I read anything being compared to the holocaust, it better be referring to the scripture the OT, NT, & Al Kittab. The former two were directly and often quoted as the motivation . The latter was also the basis of holocaust that preceded some 1200 – 1300 year before Hitler’s, albeit on a smaller scale perhaps. That said it was pretty much thorough and complete.

XVIIHailSkins

If memory serves, I believe this is the same David Wolpe that brazenly drew connections to the holocaust in one of his poems written in reaction to Germany’s proposed ban on infant genital mutilation. Appears the shoe is on the other foot.

shilotoren

of course using the holocaust to criticize laws once adopted by Nazi Germany is so far farfetched. Who would have guessed. Not any idiot like hailskins.

shilotoren

for sure they should be disallowed in most cases. sometimes though they are justified, although hard to be a judge when.